Belief and Unbelief, Tolerance in the Modern West – James P. McCartin

Belief and Unbelief, Tolerance and Intolerance in the Modern West

James P. McCartin

Department of History

Seton Hall University

Course Outline

This M.A.-level seminar explores two related themes: first, the historical development of religious belief and unbelief in the modern West; and second, alternating (and overlapping) periods of religious tolerance and intolerance in Europe and North America. Since course readings focus on significant historical changes in the areas of social, cultural, political, and intellectual life, students will encounter a range of methodological approaches and source materials utilized by contemporary scholars of religious history. Students will also develop a broad interpretive framework for Western religious history beginning with the age of the Reformation. The course is designed to sharpen students’ analytical skills with the aim of preparing them to conduct research on a related topic.

At the conclusion of the course, students should be able: 1.) to identify a series of major events, trends, and phenomena that have shaped religious history in modern Europe and North America; 2.) to articulate the central historiographical arguments that have emerged in the recent historical literature related to the topic of the course; and 3) to distinguish between different historical varieties of religious belief and different approaches to religious conflict and pluralism in the modern West.

Course Grading and Assignments

Review Essay #1………………………………………20%

Review Essay #2………………………………………20%

Review Essay #3………………………………………20%

Class Participation……………………………………..40%

Students will produce three critical review essays, each of about 10-12 pages in length. Reviews will each treat three books, providing a comparison of the author’s distinct aims, a critical discussion of common themes, an evaluation of research methodology, and an analysis of the source materials on which each work is based. Students are also expected to come prepared to discuss in depth the course readings assigned for each class meeting.

Required Readings

Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (2001)

Stuart B. Schwartz, All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the

Iberian Atlantic World (2009)

Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in

Early Modern Europe (2007)

Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt, The Book that Changed Europe:

Picart and Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World (2010)

Chris Beneke, Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of American Pluralism (2008)

Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (1990) James Turner, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (1986)

George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (2006)

John Corrigan and Lynn S. Neal, Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History

(2010)

Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany

(2008)

Philip Jenkins, God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis (2009)

Chris Hedges, When Atheism Becomes Religion: America’s New Fundamentalists (2009)

Gianni Vattimo, Belief (1999)

Course Schedule

Week 1: Introduction: What is Belief? What is Tolerance?

Week 2: Belief, Violence, and the Making of the Early Modern West

Reading: Gregory

Week 3: The Rise of Tolerance in the Old World and the New

Reading: Schwartz

Week 4: Toleration in Practice

Reading: Kaplan

**Review Essay #1 (treating Gregory, Schwartz, and Kaplan) due today

Week 5: Enlightenment and the Shifting Character of Believing

Reading: Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt

Week 6: Pluralism, Toleration, and the American Founding

Reading: Beneke

Week 7: Belief, Doubt, and “Secularization”

Reading: Chadwick

**Review Essay #2 (treating Hunt, et al., Beneke, and Chadwick) due today

Week 8: The Rise of Popular Unbelief

Reading: Turner

Week 9: Fundamentalism as a Way of Believing

Reading: Marsden

Week 10: Intolerance in the Land of Liberty

Reading: Corrigan and Neal

Week 11: Christianity, Judaism, and the Holocaust

Reading: Heschel

Week 12: Christianity, Islam, and Contemporary Europe

Reading: Jenkins

Week 13: The Rise of Rationalist Fundamentalism

Reading: Hedges

Week 14: Believing in an Age of Doubt

Reading: Vattimo

**Review Essay #3 (treating three of the following: Turner, Marsden, Corrigan/Neal, Heschel, Jenkins, and Vatimo) due today